In collaboration with the 2017 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Storefront presents Letters to the Mayor: Seoul + Pyongyangaspart of the global Letters to the Mayor project. Each iteration presents a collection of letters by more than 100 architects, addressing the most pressing issues facing their city.

Letters to the Mayor: Seoul + Pyongyang invites the following architects to write to Mayor of Seoul Park Won-soon, to the Chairman of the People’s Committee and the de-facto mayor of Pyongyang Pak Kwan-o:

Letters to the Mayor is an itinerant exhibition that displays real letters written by architects to their city mayors. Initiated by Storefront for Art and Architecture in 2014, the project has traveled to more than 15 cities across the globe, including Bogota, Mexico City, Athens, Panama City, Taipei, Mariupol, Madrid, Lisbon, and Buenos Aires, among others. See here for a list of iterations.

Letters to the Mayor invites 100 architects in each city to write a letter to their mayor as a means of bringing innovative ideas and visions of the city closer to the decision-makers, and vice versa.

Throughout history, architects have engaged with this responsibility and the structures of economic, political, and cultural power in different ways and with varying degrees of success. With the rise of globalization and the homogenization of the contemporary city, the role of the architect in the political arena has often been relegated to answering questions that others have asked.

Letters to the Mayor questions this dynamic, and invites local and global architects to deliver their thoughts directly to the desks of elected officials, and simultaneously into the public consciousness.